This is what they call political hardball.
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Attorney General Ken Paxton on Friday endorsed a slate of primary challengers to state House Republicans who voted to impeach him, a new front in his political revenge tour since the Texas Senate acquitted him.Some background:
Paxton threw his support behind seven challengers, including those running against House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, and Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, chair of the House impeachment managers. Paxton’s campaign described it as an initial round of endorsements and promised more details soon on a “statewide Fall tour,” including campaign stops with the candidates.
“Texas conservatives have seen their State House hijacked by liberal RINO Republicans for far too long,” Paxton said in a statement. “I’m making these endorsements to begin restoring a conservative majority in our state House.”
Phelan's campaign fired back, saying his constituents "will not be swayed by the West Texas billionaires and their cult of out-of-town political puppets seeking to influence southeast Texas."
The West Texas oilmen Tim Dunn and Dan and Farris Wilks have been top donors to House primary challengers over the years and more recently bankrolled efforts opposing Paxton's impeachment.
The endorsements come about three weeks after the Senate acquitted Paxton in his impeachment trial, ratcheting up a civil war among Texas Republicans. The House overwhelmingly voted in May to impeach Paxton, accusing him of abusing his office to help a friend and donor, Nate Paul.
- Tim Dunn.
Dunn is influential in state and local politics in Texas and has been called the most effective political donor in Texas. A backer of conservative causes, he has spent millions of dollars encouraging the Texas Republican Party and Texas Legislature to become more conservative. In 2006, he formed the conservative advocacy group Empower Texans and was the group's primary financial contributor. Dunn serves on the board of the Community News Foundation, a media organization that publishes the Texas Scorecard. Dunn is a founding board member of Citizens for Self-Governance, which spearheads the Convention of States project, a national effort seeking to call an Article V convention to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Lucy Burns Institute and vice chairman of the board of directors at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.[9][10]
A 2022 report by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism found that Dunn had provided major funding to the Defend Texas Liberty PAC, which spent over $5 million challenging Republican incumbents it viewed as insufficiently conservative.
As of August 2022, Federal Election Commission data showed that Dunn had made more than 300 political donations since 2008.
- Dan and Farris Wilks.
- The Wilks brothers supported Texas U.S. Senator Ted Cruz in the 2016 United States presidential election, contributing $15 million to a super political action committee backing Cruz's campaign.
- They gave $50,000 in 2016 to the candidacy of Jeff Judson, who unsuccessfully challenged fellow Republican Joe Straus, Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, in the District 121 Republican legislative primary in March 2016.
- Farris Wilks gave $75,000 to Jeff Cason in the 2020 Republican primary in the contest to replace Jonathan Stickland in Texas State House District 92.
- Their Defend Texas Liberty PAC gave more than $3 million to the Don Huffines 2022 Texas gubernatorial campaign.
The Wilks brothers were early investors in political commentator Ben Shapiro's media company The Daily Wire, a conservative news and opinion website in 2015. Additionally, the Wilks Brothers provided early stage funding to Prager University, a YouTube channel and media company started by Dennis Prager to further conservative causes to a young audience. They are major donors to conservative advocacy group Empower Texans.
